Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Lofthouse Cookie Bars with Whipped Buttercream Frosting

I LOVE sweets and the frosting on the lofthouse cookies are a big weakness of mine. I always wish there was more frosting! I found the cookie recipe for these on pinterest and they were great! The frosting was almost spot on. The only problem? I'm lazy and I don't want to spend my time frosting each individual cookie or baking in batches. Then I saw a recipe for lofthouse cookie bars. I thought, "What a great idea! I won't even have to individually cut out the cookies, it's one pan, and one bake time. AND it's one thing to frost!" But the bar recipe just called for boring old buttercream frosting. "Not a problem," I thought, "I'll just use the frosting recipe from the cookies!" Brilliant. The amount is perfect and the bars are better than the cookies! The cookie recipe is here and the bar recipe is here.

1. For the bars, you will need to preheat the oven to 350F and grease a 15x10 jelly roll pan. The original recipe says to coat the pan in foil first, then grease it, but I always have problems with the aluminum foil staying on the bottom of the cookies and having to peel it off.

3. Press the dough into your pan. I recommend sprinkling it with flour first and coating your hands in flour. It can be very sticky and hard to smooth out otherwise. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely before frosting.

4. For the frosting cream together 1c. butter, 1t. vanilla, and 4c. powdered sugar. Slowly add in 6T. heavy cream and beat until frosting is light and fluffy. The heavy cream is what really makes the difference in the frosting! Add food coloring if desired. I desired, so I added red.

1. Mix butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla together until well blended. Add cream and mix on high speed until frosting is light and fluffy. Add food coloring if desired. Spread over cooled bars and add sprinkles if desired.